The purpose of this blog is to discuss and explore the mythical and metahistorical origins and development of the Aryan[Indo-European,Indo-Germanic] race and their metaphysical beliefs. This is a companion blog to Celto-Germanic Culture, Myth and History and Die Armanenschaft der Ario-Germanen blogs.

Lascaux cave art

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Jung's massive hymn to the sun could not have come at a more opportune time in German cultural history. All around him, in places such as Bavaria, Thuringia, and Ascona, German-speaking youths were on the march. They were hiking, singing German folk songs, reading Navalis, Goethe, Haeckel, Wilhelm Bblsche, Hesse, and Madame Blavatsky, wearing swastika pendants and runic rings, bathing nude in the sun, and dancing around bonfires on the days of the summer solstice-the ancient German festival of the "changing sun" (Sonnwendfest). They carried banners with the ancient Aryan "sun wheel" on them, a symbol of god that could be found in the ancient homelands of the Aryans-Iran and especially India-in the for-in of circular mandalas. And they sang hymns of praise to the sun. Because of decades of Volkish speculation about the consequences of the work of philologists such as Muller and Renan, there was an extraordinary revival of interest in not only the symbolism of sun worship but also its practice. The natural religion of the ancient Aryans-and indeed, of all humans if one were to speculate far enough-was revived by a multitude of groups all over Germany, Austria, and especially Switzerland, where cults and heretical sects had blossomed for centuries. Some actually performed group rituals in honor of the sun. But sun worship was just one element in a confused mass of cultural contradictions that beset Ger-inany in the three decades preceding the First World War. From the racialist right to the anarchist left a culture of "progressive reaction" against industrial capitalism was on the rise. All of the values that formed the foundation of the industrial order-repressive Judeo-Christian antihedonism, utilitarianism, and rational thought-were confronted with new philosophies of life or of pure experiences that exalted myth over history, impulsive action or deed over conscious reflection, and feeling or intuition over rational thought. This progressive reaction, as historian Jost Hermand has termed it, was manifest in a profound sense of loss, a sense that a spiritual connection with nature and the cosmos had been sacrificed with the rise of a more highly mechanized, industrialized, and urbanized civilization. Much of the sense of loss was expressed in metaphors of degeneration and decay. Civilization had ruined human beings by forcing them into unnatural, cramped, urban environments. Diseases physical and mental were hatched in some places, and the medical science of the day believed that such damage to an individual could be passed down to successive generations. Racial renewal, whether for the individual or society as a whole, was associated with new attitudes toward sexuality and eroticism. There was a cry to recover the Volk-that mystical union of a people with its blood and landscape-from the degenerate industrialized masses. The iron cage of "civilization"-Judeo-Christian beliefs and other political and value systems-had to be cast off in order to recover true culture, the primordial ground of the soul, the Volk. There was only one solution: recover the "archaic man" within, allowing a rejuvenating return to the chthonic powers of the Edenic, Aryan past. It is no coincidence that these same ideas are expressed time and again by C. G. Jung, especially in the first sixty years of his life. The multifaceted Volkish movement (Volkstumbewegung) had a broad plan for Germanic society: at the individual level, the taking of cures, abstinence from alcohol, nudism, vegetarianism, the eating of health foods, contact with the ancestors through spiritualist practices, and hiking through Nature were all remedies to erase the sense of profound loss that so many suffered. At the level of culture, a cleansing of the Aryan race through eugenics and deportations was proposed. Inspired by Herder, Schleiermacher, Ernst Mortiz Amdt, and Turnvater Jahn, throughout the nineteenth century the movement grew increasingly influential as the Germans sought their place in the sun. After German unification in 1871, Volkish energies fueled the establishment of a multitude of lodges, clubs, societies, and so on, all devoted to spiritual renewal. Some of these groups were motivated by blood mysticism and fantasies of reform through a return to the worship of the old Aryan gods. As early as 1814, Amdt had proposed a return to the celebration of the summer solstice as a way to return politically fragmented Germans to their cultural and religious roots. It was left to future leaders to bring his dream into reality. Eugen Diederichs, the famous Jena publisher of many of the new texts of this mystical, Volkish, neo-romantic movement, was one of them. He personally led sun-worshiping rituals with his youth-movement disciples beginning in 1904, expressing the beliefs of so many of them when he said, "My view of god is this, that I regard the sun as a source of all life." The youth organization of the Monistenbund-inspired and led by Haeckel-sponsored sun-worshiping festivals each summer solstice. Haeckel himself was not a practicing neopagan but loved the spirit of the movement. In 1910, the year Jung got lost in sun-hero myths while researching Wandlungen, a Monistenbund joumal reproduced this hymn to the sun:

We are all children of the sun. Out of its womb our planet was bom. An eter nal law of nature compels us to be within its sphere and influence. The im mensity of space is cold, still, lifeless-our luminous mother sun, warming and ripening our fruit, appears as the simple, true element of life. Our ances tors knew this in ancient times. Thus their justifiable joy when the sun made its slow victoriou@ spiral across the sky. They then remembered that all those trees, which concealed their greenness in the wintertime, were consecrated to the god, Wotan.45

Others wanted a Wagnerian twist to their Volkish neopaganism. They gathered in bearskins and made ritual sacrifices of animals to Wotan, Thor, Baldur, and other Teutonic deities. They studied the symbols of the ancient Norse runes and took visionary joumeys to meet with members of an ancient spiritual brotherhood. There were dozens of groups like these, large and small. They convinced themselves that they were chosen, like the grail knights in Wagner's Parsifal, to seek and protect the Holy Grail-in this case, the spiritual purity of Aryan blood. The most famous of these was the Tannenberg Foundation of General Erich Ludendorff, war hero and, later, a co-conspirator in Adolf Hider's failed putsch in 1923. The symbol of Ludendorff's organization was the hammer of Thor. Like many in German culture at the turn of the century, Ludendorff wanted to eradicate Christianity and replace it with an Aryan faith. As one commentator on the neopagan movement in Germany revealed, "In line with the Tannenberg program for the restoration of the ancient Germanic religion, General Ludendorff, accompanied by a few young men, would from time to time retire to the forests near Munich, where a bonfire was lighted and a horse sacrificed in honor of Thor, the god of thunder."

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Jung's German spirituality was never more apparent: his references to the rootedness of one's spirituality, of the fact that one's spirituality must come from one's blood, and the appeal to stay within the boundaries of one's mystical landscape. In a 1918 essay, "Uber das Unbewusste" (translated as "The Role of the Unconscious"), Jung used "rootedness" to argue that the psychoanalysis of Freud and Alfred Adler could apply only to Jews. Jung argued that Germans would find Jewish psychoanalysis unsatisfying. Analytical psychology is therefore an Aryan science and form of spiritual psychotherapy that can truly assist only those of Aryan blood. Whereas Jung considered the English an extension of Germanic blood, his tolerance did not extend to Slavs such as Ouspensky. The English were Aryans, they could be redeemed with his methods. Slavs, although originally Aryan, had too much Asian blood mixed in; they would have a difficult time. Jews could not be redeemed.

Although every foreigner who came into contact with Jung received a heavy dose of Volkish mysticism, few understood its uniquely German context.

The term rooted was constantly invoked by Volkish thinkers-and with good reason. Such rootedness conveyed the sense of man's correspondence with the landscape through his soul and thus with the Volk, which embodied the life spirit of the cosmos. It provided the essential link in the Volkish chain of being. Moreover, rural rootedness served as a contrast to urban dislocation, or what was termed "uprootedness." It also fumished a convenient criterion for excluding foreigners from the Volk and the virtues of rootedness. In addition, the concept of rootedness provided a standard for measuring man's completeness and his inner worth. Accordingly, having no roots stigmatized a person as being deprived of the life force and thus lacking a properly func tioning soul. Rootlessness condemned the whole man, whereas rootedness signified membership in the Volk which rendered man his humanity.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Wagner`s last and many argue his greatest music drama[he did not refer to them as operas] is Parsifal. Wagner based his work on Wolfram von Eschenbach`s version of the Parzival myth. However von Eschenbach`s work does agree closely with the older version by Chretien de Troyes.
It would be a mistake to label Parsifal as a Christian passion play as many have over the years since its first performance in 1882. Sacred drama it may be but Christian certainly not. There is a thin, a very thin Christian veneer to the drama but only a very superficial understanding would cause one to consider it essentially a Christian work.
Parsifal is inextricably linked to the King Arthur and Holy Grail myths of the high Middle Ages whose roots may be traced right back to pre-christian Celtic times and the myth of the Cauldron which features in many Celtic tales, especially the Cauldron of the god Dagda. A real life magical cauldron, the Gundestrup Cauldron was discovered in a Danish peat bog at Gundestrup and datable to the 1st or 2nd century BCE and probably manufactured in Gaul. Its sides feature images of Celtic deities and sacred magical rituals and the author John Grigsby in his Warriors of the Wasteland considers that it was connected to rituals of human sacrifice because there is a basis for this in Celtic myths and human sacrifice in peat bogs is known to have been practiced in the Celtic and Germanic regions.[See PV Glob`s The Bog People]
Both the Grail[taken from the Old French graal, an adaption of the Latin gradalis] is a dish, a cauldron in other words and like the Cauldron of Celtic myth had curious restorative properties and could provide nourishment and sustenance for the Knights of the Grail as Dagda`s Cauldron could.
Current popular authors associate the Grail with the idea of a bloodline, most especially a messianic bloodline which must be guarded and kept secret.
Wagner whether intentionally or not appears to be responsible in the eyes of some scholars for associating the Grail with the concept of Aryan blood purity. Certainly his Pasifal does seem to associate the concept of the land around Montsalvat being laid waste due to the faithlessness of its king Amfortas who succombed in temptation to the feminine charms of the sorceress Kundry who is taken by some to be a feminine Wandering Jew. The result of this lapse was a loss in blood purity and the onset of physical and spiritual corruption in the Grail lands which only Parsifal, the Aryan redeemer could restore.
Only by his possession of the sacred spear/lance and the Grail could he restore the land and people.
The spear could be likened to a penis, the Grail a womb. The meeting of the two, the animus and the anima would restore Aryan wholeness and blood purity.
Many have also likened the sacred spear or lance with the spear of Wotan, Gungnir which in Wagner`s Siegfried was broken by the hero Siegfried and this marked the end of the gods, the onset of the Goetterdaemmerung, The Twilight of the Gods.
Parsifal in effect is a reborn Siegfried, a hero destined to a higher status who will fulfill his mission where Siegfried failed but nevertheless builds upon Siegfried`s past work.
Where Siegfried, the fearless hero was intent on discovering the emotion of fear[something he lacked] Parsifal`s mission was to discover the emotion of compassion[Mitleid].
On discovering the Valkyrie in a deep sleep[induced by her father Wotan for disobedience] on the summit of a rocky mountain, surrounded by a magical wall of fire that no coward dare cross Siegfried suddenly experienced fear for the first time in his life:

Monday, March 17, 2008

The title "Aryan" is the Anglicized form of the Sanskrit Arya, the "noble or exalted", a term which is employed in Indian literature, ancient and modern, solely in a racial sense to designate the fair ruling and civilizing race as opposed to the dark aboriginal subject people, and India itself was called the "Land or Region of the Aryas[or Aryans]." It is also used in its proper racial sense by Huxley in the heading in designating the fair long-headed people, now mainly represented in Europe by the British and Norse or Scandinavians, the so-called "Nordics" of modern anthropologists.
It is similarly used in a racial or ruling sense by the Sumerians, Akkads, Amorites, and Hittites in its earlier form of Ar, Ara, Ari, Har or Harri, also meaning "exalted or noble"[see Ar, Ara, etc in Dictionary], and similarly with a like meaning in Ancient Egypt[see Hari, Heri under Ar in Dictionary]; and ancient Greek name of Aeria or Harie for Egypt, probably designated that country as the "Land of the Ari or the Aryans". The Medes, as`Herodotus records, were formerly called Arii; and "Ariana" or "Land of the Ari" was`a title of Persia and the source of the modern name Iran for that land. The title Harri is used by the Mitani or the Early Medes, on their records about 1400 B.C. . Darius-the-Great calls himself on his tomb "an Ariyo of Ariyo descent". It is the Her title of the Ancient Goths, in their great epics, the Eddas, and the source of the modern Herr or "master" of the Teutons and Scandinavians, of the Irish Celtic Aira, a "chief" or "nobleman", and of the Ar in aristocratic[see Ari "Aryan" in Dictionary].
This title Ar, Ari, Arya, or "Aryan", appears, as I have shown, to have originally designated the Early Aryans as "The Ploghmen" from the Sumerian Ar, Ara, "plough", which is now disclosed as the source of the Old English ear, "to plough, to ear the ground" and of "ar-able", etc.[See Ar, "plough" in Dict]. The Aryans are now seen to have been the traditional inventors of the plough and of the Agricultural Era of the World; and the sense of Ara or "the exalted ones" appears to have been used for this title when this gifted race became the rulers of the various aboriginal tribes-the Sumerian also gives the plough sign the meaning of "raise up, exalt" as the secondary meaning of ploughing as "the uplifting" of the earth[see Ara, exalt, in the Dict].

Mr Waddell in his Makers of Civilization in Race and History writes:

"The title Arya, Englished into "Aryan", is the usual term employed for the white race, now called from its western stock "Nordic", from the very earliest Vedic period by the eastern or Indian branch of that race who have uniquely preserved its early traditional history and records; and the same race is similarly so termed by the Ancient Persians who also belonged to its eastern branch. And the title was and is solely used by them in a racial and in no other sense; and especially it is never used by them in a linguistic sense as is popularly supposed-a useage which was only introduced by European philologists a few generations ago. That title Arya literally means in both the Indian Sanskrit, the old classic language of India, and in the Ancient Persian language "the exalted or noble one"; and it is derived as I have shown from the Sumerian Ar, Ara "exalt, lofty, shining, glory"; which is also disclosed as the remote Sumerian root of our modern word "Aristocrat" or "noblest or most excellent governor", derived through the Greek, a word which well defines the older ethnic meaning of the word "Aryan". For the civilizers of the old world are now disclosed to have been more or less exclusively of this Aryan stock, which was essentially an aristocracy of master-men, the ruling race who established Civilization and who civilized the aborigines by their enlightened rule and science; just as in the Greek classic period of Europe, Greek Civilization reached its zenith under a military aristocracy of this same Aryan race, and weakened and became practically extinct with the weakening and practical extinction of this Aryan racial element from the population there. Indeed the later Sumerians do appear also to have used this title in a racial sense in the aspirated form of Ha-ra, which is defined in the bilingual Assyrian glossaries as "The host of the nation or people."

The title Ara, Arya or "Aryan" is found as a designation of rulers or masters to run throughout the whole family of the Aryan languages, including the Egyptian, presumably because the early rulers and masters were of this race. Thus it is in aspirated form the Her, Hera, Hearra or Herr, "lord or master" of the Goths, Scandinavians, Germans and Anglo-Saxons, the Aire "chieftain" of the Irish Scots and Gaels and so on. It is the Arios, Harios or Harri of the Medes, and Arya and Airya of the Ancient Persians in a similar exalted and racial sense; and it is thus proudly used by Darius the Great on his tomb where he calls himself "An Arya of Arya[n] descent", and Xerxes called himself a "Harri". The early sea-going branch of the Sumerians, the Morites or Amorites who have left many "prehistoric" inscriptions in the British Isles, whilst calling themselves Mur,Gut or "Goth" and Kad[forms of Khatti, Catti or "Hittite"], also called themselves Ari, which now appears to be a dialectic form of this title "Aryan".